Reprint  from  THE  EDUCATIONAL  BI-MONTHLY,  October  1912 


The  Library  Situation  in  Chicago  High  Schools 

The  first  of  three  papers  read  before  the  English  Section  of  the 

Chicago  High  and  Normal  School  Association,  May  n,  1912. 

7 U  BOUT  three  years  ago,  Mrs.  Dracass,  of  the  Englewood 
JJ  U  High  School,  began  an  investigation  into  library  condi¬ 
tions  in  the  high  schools  of  Chicago  and  other  cities,  both  east 
and  west.  The  amount  of  material  which  she  collected  was 
so  great  that  she  found  herself  unable  to  handle  it  alone,  so  a 
committee  of  the  library  section  of  the  association  went  to  her 
assistance  last  fall.  The  results  of  the  questionnaire  which  she 
prepared  and  sent  out  in  November  and  December,  1911,  have 
been  tabulated,  and  certain  facts  seem  to  be  of  sufficient  im¬ 
portance  to  the  teachers  in  general  to  warrant  their  presenta¬ 
tion  in  condensed  form  to  this  English  section. 

For  the  sake  of  convenience  the  presentation  will  be  given 
under  three  heads  :  the  conditions  in  Chicago  schools,  the  con¬ 
ditions  in  schools  outside  of  Chicago,  and  the  possibilities  that 
seem  within  our  immediate  reach.  As  to  the  last,  we  do  not 
aim  to  present  an  ideal  scheme,  but  one  which  will,  in  our  be¬ 
lief,  work  a  material  improvement  over  present  conditions,  and 
which  at  the  same  time,  there  is  some  hope  of  realizing  at  once 
or  in  the  very  near  future. 

But  in  order  to  make  clear  what  can  be  done,  and  to  en¬ 
deavor  to  enlist  your  aid  in  its  accomplishment,  it  is  first  neces¬ 
sary  to  review  broadly  what  each  of  you  knows  in  part ;  name¬ 
ly,  the  present  situation  here.  The  library  facilities  and  prac¬ 
tice  in  the  different  city  schools  vary  widely.  According  to 
the  replies  to  the  questionnaire,  three  schools  are  wholly  with¬ 
out  libraries.  In  the  sixteen  other  schools  that  replied,  the 
number  of  books  varies  from  825  to  7,400.  Five  schools  run 
circulating  departments.  The  reference-room  facilities, 
where  there  are  any,  vary  from  a  seating  capacity  of  sixteen 
to  one  of  144.  In  ten  schools  the  library  is  in  charge  of  a 
teacher;  in  one,  of  a  clerk;  and  in  two,  has  been  closed  for 
lack  of  an  attendant.  These  ten  teachers  have,  in  addition  to 
the  library  work,  regular  class  work;  four  of  them  having 
four  classes,  and  six  of  them  five. 

But  such  statistics  as  these  are  meaningless  to  the  general 


teacher,  so  we  will  pass  on  to  some  queries  as  to  the  practical 
use  of  the  library  as  it  is  conducted  to-day.  Is  your  school 
library  justifying  its  existence?  Is  it  doing  what  it  could  and 
should,  considering  that  from  $600  to  $4,000  is  invested  there 
in  books  alone?  Can  you  send  a  pupil  to  look  up  a  reference 
and  feel  reasonably  sure  that  he  will  get  it?  Is  there  any  one 
in  your  school  who  knows  exactly  what  is  in  the  library  ?  I  do 
not  except  even  the  teacher  in  charge,  for  I  know  from  experi¬ 
ence  that  a  teacher  doing  regular  work  has  no  time  to  become 
familiar  with  the  books  in  subjects  outside  of  his  own  line. 

Nobody  but  the  one  in  charge  of  a  library  has  any  idea  of  how 
many  pupils  are  turned  away  unsatisfied;  and  for  every  one 
turned  away,  two  fail  to  come.  Could  not  the  library  be  of 
enough  importance  in  your  own  subject  to  warrant  having 
somebody  there  who  could  direct  the  pupils  in  the  use  of  the 
books?  It  is  useless  to  say  that  the  teacher  himself  should  do 
this,  for  the  teacher  is  usually  in  a  class  when  the  pupil  wants 
the  book.  Have  you  not  bought  books  yourself  rather  than 
insist  that  those  which  are  the  property  of  the  school  be  put  in 
some  central  place  and  by  means  of  proper  cards  and  attend 
ants  be  made  available  to  all  who  wish  to  use  them?  Do 
your  pupils  know  how  to  use  the  dictionary  and  encyclopedia, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  more  specialized  books  of  reference? 

If  not,  should  they  not  be  definitely  taught?  Are  there  maga¬ 
zines  in  your  library  that  meet  the  demands  of  the  vocational 
trend  of  the  times,  in  commerce,  trades,  modern  inventions? 

Does  the  library  supply  the  demand  for  home  reading  books, 
and  does  it  do  its  duty  in  the  general  elevation  of  the  pupils’ 
taste  in  literature? 

Some  contend  that  the  public  library  and  its  branches 
are  already  doing  all  that  is  necessary  for  the  high  school. 

The  facts,  however,  hardly  bear  out  the  contention.  The  pub¬ 
lic  library  caters,  primarily,  to  the  desultory  reader,  young 
children,  mechanics,  foreigners,  and  adult  research  work- -rs, 
and  only  incidentally  to  pupils  of  high-school  age.  Moreover, 
from  the  schools  that  are  most  conveniently  situated  with  re¬ 
gard  to  branches,  comes  the  complaint  that  not  enough  copies 
of  any  one  book  can  be  obtained  at  any  one  time  to  meet  the  I 

needs  of  the  classes.  This  is  particularly  true  of  books  as¬ 
signed  for  home  reading.  There  is,  furthermore,  practically 


—  2  — 


c.^  vx 


no  hope  of  any  improvement  in  the  near  future.  Mr.  Logie? 
has  said  that  nothing  can  be  thought  of  in  connection  with 
branches  in  the  schools  for  at  least  ten  years ;  moreover,  there 
is  serious  question  whether  such  branches,  which  must  be  open 
to  the  general  public  as  well  as  to  the  pupils,  would  not  be 
more  of  a  menace  than  a  benefit. 

Of  the  definite  attempts  to  meet  the  high-school  needs  in 
the  high-school  libraries  themselves,  I  shall  outline  only  two : — 
that  at  the  Tuley,  chosen  because  I  know  most  about  it;  and 
that  at  the  Englewood,  chosen  because  it  is  along  the  line  of 
what  the  library  committee  hopes  may  become  general. 

At  the  Tuley  there  is  a  reference  room  seating  about 
sixty,  and  a  stack  room  adjoining,  containing  some  3,000  vol¬ 
umes,  of  which  half  are  fiction.  Both  reference  and  circulat¬ 
ing  departments  are  in  operation.  The  work  is  in  charge  of 
the  teacher  of  the  third  and  fourth  year  English,  who  has  five 
classes  in  addition  to  the  library  work.  The  librarian  is  as¬ 
sisted  by  six  pupil  volunteers,  who  practically  take  charge  of 
the  circulating  department.  They  are  given  some  training, 
and,  under  the  supervision  of  the  librarian,  accession,  catalog, 
and  care  for  the  books.  In  the  circulating  department  an  at¬ 
tempt  is  made  to  supply  sufficient  duplicate  titles  of  the  popular 
books  that  are  recommended  for  book  reports,  to  meet  the  de¬ 
mands  reasonably.  An  attempt  is  made  also  to  have  illustra¬ 
tive  material  for  use  in  the  study  of  the  history  of  literature. 
Pupils  must  apply  for  books  before  nine  o’clock  in  the  morn¬ 
ing,  and  the  orders  are  filled  by  the  pupil  assistants  as  they 
have  time  during  the  day.  The  average  circulation  this  year 
has  been  about  thirty  volumes  daily. 

The  reference  department  is  run  on  the  honor  system, 
with  open  shelves.  The  teachers  in  the  different  subjects  take 
from  the  regular  shelves  the  books  needed  at  any  one  time,  and 
place  them  in  special  cases — one  for  English  history,  one  for 
American  history,  etc.,  and  the  pupils  are  directed  to  those 
cases.  General  reference  books,  declamation  and  debating 
books,  etc.,  are  also  in  special  cases,  open  to  the  pupils  at  all 
times.  It  is  understood  that  books  in  these  cases  are  not  to  be 
taken  from  the  room  during  the  day,  and  may  not  be  drawn 
on  a  pupil’s  card  for  longer  than  one  night.  A  teacher  is  as¬ 
signed  to  the  reference  room  for  each  hour  of  the  day  to  keep 


—  3  — 


order ;  and  any  pupil  who  is  above  75  in  all  his  studies  for  any 
month  has  the  privilege  of  going  there  during  his  study  hours 
the  next  month. 

This  plan  works  fairly  well  for  the  circulating  department, 
except  that  the  time  for  drawing  books  is  too  short.  Since  the 
pupil  assistants  take  full  work,  it  is  impossible  to  ask  them  to 
give  much  of  their  study  time  to  library  work,  and,  therefore, 
the  rule  has  to  be  enforced  that  all  applications  for  books  be 
made  before  school  in  the  morning.  With  somebody  in  the 
library  each  period  who  expected  to  devote  his  time  to  that 
work,  the  circulation  could  be  doubled  at  least. 

In  the  reference  department,  however,  the  Tuley  plan  is 
wofully  lacking.  The  librarian  is  present  only  ten  hours  a 
week.  The  pupil  assistants  do  not  know  the  contents  of  the 
books,  and  the  teacher  in  charge  of  the  reference  room  is 
there  for  police  duty,  and  in  general  is  not  familiar  with  the 
books  outside  those  of  his  own  department.  Even  when  the 
librarian  is  present,  it  is  no  unusual  thing  for  him  to  be  found 
lacking  in  knowledge  of  the  contents  of  the  books  outside  those 
of  his  own  department  and  those  of  general  reference.  He 
needs  more  time  in  the  library,  more  time  to  analyze  the  books 
minutely  for  the  card  catalog.  Were  this  done,  the  pupil  as¬ 
sistants  or  the  teacher  in  charge  could  tell  what  books,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  contain  copies  of  Magna  Charta. 

The  Englewood  plan  is  a  step  in  advance  of  this.  In 
that  school  a  course  in  Library  Economics  has  been  estab¬ 
lished,  which  at  present  is  being  taken  by  forty-four  pupils. 
The  training  and  value  of  that  course  are  foreign  to  the  pres¬ 
ent  discussion,  so  they  will  not  be  given  here;  but  those  who 
are  interested  may  find  an  account  of  them  in  the  April  (1912) 
number  of  The  English  Journal,  under  the  title  “An  Experi¬ 
ment  in  Library  Training  in  the  High  School”.  The  course, 
as  outlined,  calls  for  one  hour  per  week  of  service  work,  so 
that  for  each  period  of  each  day  there  is  in  the  library  a 
trained  pupil  who  expects  to  devote  his  time  to  waiting  on 
those  who  come  to  the  exchange  desk. 

The  plant  consists  of  a  reference  room  seating  sixteen, 
a  stack  room  with  a  capacity  for  10,000  volumes,  and  a  work 
room,  or  laboratory,  for  the  library  course.  There  are  in  the 
reference  room  about  150  volumes  of  general  reference,  and  in 


the  stack  room  7,400  volumes,  of  which  1,500  are  fiction.  In  the 
work  room,  and  not  available  for  lack  of  cataloging,  are  over 
1,000  more  volumes  of  bound  and  unbound  magazines,  govern¬ 
ment  documents,  etc.  Both  circulating  and  reference  depart¬ 
ments  are  conducted.  The  circulating  department  is  open 
from  8:30  to  2:30,  and  the  average  daily  circulation  is  80. 
As  at  the  Tuley,  a  definite  attempt  is  made  to  supply  reason¬ 
ably  the  demands  for  home  reading;  as  many  as  thirty  copies 
of  some  books  being  on  the  shelves. 

Except  for  books  of  general  reference,  the  closed-shelf 
system  is  used;  that  is,  the  pupil  cannot  go  to  the  cases  and 
help  himself  to  a  book  on  history,  etc.  This  is  necessitated  by 
the  few  copies  of  such  books  in  comparison  with  the  large  de¬ 
mand  for  them.  Any  pupil  may  go  to  the  reference  room  by  per¬ 
mission,  but  is  expected  to  stay  only  so  long  as  necessary ;  that  is, 
this  is  a  reference  room  only,  whereas  that  at  the  Tuley  is  both 
reading  and  reference  room.  The  difference  in  the  seating 
capacity  explains  this. 

The  work  is  in  charge  of  a  teacher-librarian  who  has  four 
classes,  besides  the  library  work.  A  teacher  is  assigned  to  the 
reference  room  each  hour,  who  is  expected  to  aid  the  pupil 
assistant,  when  there  is  such  a  rush  that  two  are  needed,  or 
when  the  pupil  is  asked  something  which  he  cannot  answer. 
A  point  to  be  noted  here  is  that  whereas  at  the  Tuley  the 
teacher  is  assigned  to  the  reading  room  for  police  duty  only, 
at  the  Englewood  he  is  there  for  library  work. 

That  this  is  in  advance  of  the  Tuley  plan  is  shown,  for 
one  thing,  by  the  difference  in  circulation.  With  the  same 
number  of  fiction  books,  the  comparison  is,  Englewood  17/9 
as  many  pupils  as  Tuley,  circulation  2  2/3  as  many,  or  1  1/2 
times  as  many  books  per  pupil.  And  in  this  comparison  it 
must  be  remembered  that  in  the  Tuley  circulation  are  counted 
one-night  books  of  reference,  which  is  not  done  at  Englewood. 
This  superiority  of  the  Englewood  circulation  is  undoubtedly 
due  in  large  part  to  the  fact  that  pupils  can  get  books  at  any 
time. 

Owing  to  lack  of  data,  it  is  impossible  to  compare  the 
reference  departments,  but  like  the  librarian  at  the  Tuley,  the 
one  at  Englewood  is  far  from  satisfied.  She  has  plenty  of 
help,  but  no  time  to  supervise  them.  The  pupils  analyze  the 


books  and  make  tentative  analytics,  but  lack  of  time  prevents 
the  librarian  from  checking  up  their  work  promptly,  and  thus 
the  card  catalog  is  never  quite  up  to  date.  During  the  past 
year,  about  4,000  cards  have  been  made  for  the  catalog.  When 
it  is  borne  in  mind  that  the  tentative  cards  made  by  the  pupil 
for  any  book  must  be  compared  with  the  book  to  see  if  they 
are  sufficient  in  number  and  proper  in  kind,  and  that  perma¬ 
nent  cards  must  be  proof  read,  it  will  be  evident  that  this  part 
of  the  work  alone  is  comparable  in  its  demands  on  the  teacher’s 
time  to  the  work  in  English  composition.  ^ 

In  short,  the  situations  at  these  two  schools  sum  up  to 
the  same  conclusion,  viz. :  the  librarian  needs  time  to  become 
familiar  with  the  books,  time  to  analyze  them  minutely,  time  * 

to  put  the  card  catalog  in  such  shape  that  the  needs  of.  the 
pupils  in  all  subjects  can  be  met  by  anyone  who  is  in  the  library 
and  who  can  read  English. 

Now,  perhaps  a  word  as  to  just  what  this  means  will  not 
be  amiss.  It  is  generally  believed  that  when  a  book  has  an 
author  card  and  a  title  card,  it  is  cataloged.  This  is  far  from 
the  truth.  The  card  catalog  is  to  the  library  what  the  index 
is  to  the  book.  Subject  cards  are  the  important  things  in 
reference  work.  The  Chicago  Public  Library,  with  its  many 
thousands  of  books,  may  make  only  two  or  three  subject  cards 
for  each  book,  for  it  has  some  ten  to  a  hundred  volumes  on 
each  subject;  but  the  small  library,  one  of  five  thousand  vol¬ 
umes  or  fewer,  must  go  much  further.  An  expert  cataloger 
for  a  public  library  says  that  for  a  small  library  every  subject 
that  occupies  ten  pages  in  a  book  should  be  recorded  in  the 
card  catalog.  The  librarians  for  the  Los  Angeles  (Calif.) 
high-school  libraries  say  that  many  subjects  that  occupy  only 
one-half  page,  or  sometimes  even  one  sentence,  should  be  cata¬ 
loged.  Do  you  realize  what  this  means  ?  Do  you  realize 
what  peculiar  books  the  high-school  librarian  deals  with?  A 
large  part  of  them  are  school  texts,  which  contain  in  their  in¬ 
troductions  very  valuable  material,  which  is  not  duplicated 
anywhere  in  the  library.  How  is  it  to  be  found?  When  you 
tell  your  pupils  to  find  the  different  meanings  of  the  word 
“romance”,  do  you  know  that  in  the  introduction  to  the  Lake 
Classics  edition  of  “The  House  of  Seven  Gables”  is  Hawthorne’s 
definition?  The  librarian  ought  to  know  it  if  he  is  to  give  the 


—  6  — 


pupils  the  full  benefit  of  the  resources  of  the  library;  and 
further,  the  librarian’s  knowledge  should  be  preserved  in  the 
card  catalog,  so  that  his  assistants  or  successor  may  have  the 
benefit  of  it.  Do  you  realize  what  this  means  for  the  libra¬ 
rian?  Go  into  your  own  school  library  and  note  the  number 
of  books  in  English  alone  that  are  school  text  editions.  Think 
what  it  means  to  read  the  introductions  and  notes  of  these  and 
make  cards  for  the  important  material.  Remember  that  the 
material  found  in  such  places  is  generally  not  found  elsewhere 
in  the  school  library,  for  the  editors  of  school  texts  draw  on 
much  larger  collections.  Then  ask  yourself  if  there  is  not  in 
the  librarian’s  work  a  great  deal  to  be  done  which  might  help 
you  in  your  work,  and  whether  this  work  is  not  of  enough  im¬ 
portance  to  warrant  its  recognition  as  part  of  the  regular 
school  duties  of  the  librarian. 

Geo.  W.  Tanner. 


Tuley  High  School. 


